


Dig Their Upward Grave

by Walutahanga



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Medical Procedures, Non-Graphic Violence, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-10 02:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4373972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 2 of Agents of Shield went a little differently, and Whitehall survived being shot. To earn good will from the Inhumans, Shield hands him over to Jiaying. What she does with him will have enormous consequences for the Marvel universe as a whole. </p><p>(A Jiaying-gets-revenge fic that went a little sideways).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It had taken a very long time for everything to fall into place. Over two decades.

Fortunately Jiaying is patient. It is a side effect of her gift; one does not have her life span without learning the art of waiting.

She looks over the surgery one last time, checking the plastic sheets over the walls and windows, the lines of sterilised silver scalpels. This place once belonged to the Afterlife’s resident doctor. Since he’d moved to another building equipped with a better surgery, this one has been deemed obsolete. The Elders agreed to allow Jiaying the use of it for this procedure, after which the building will be burned and something new erected in its place. Perhaps a flower garden.

The symmetry pleases Jiaying. A terrible fire of vengeance, followed by ashes and renewal. After justice has been carried out, they can all start afresh.

The door creaks on its hinges as Cal enters, already in blue scrubs, a wide smile on his beautiful mad face.

“Gordon’s bringing them in now,” he says. “Can you believe it? After all this time. Best day _ever_.”

Jiaying looks at his smile and finds herself envying his madness. What a simple world it is for Cal, who must always twist his outer perceptions to shape his inner fantasies. He believed that recovering Skye would make it as if he had never lost their Daisy, that murdering Whitehall might make Jiaying love him again.

In some ways this is to Jiaying’s benefit. Cal is laughably easy to manipulate, if you know what buttons to press. In other ways, his instability is a risk.

“Are you certain you can do this?” She says. 

His smile fades and he assures her seriously:

“I’ve gone over the files and I know exactly what needs to be done. Trust me, Jiaying. I’m going to do this right. For you, and Daisy, and our family.”

“It’s not just about revenge, you know.” She turns away, looks at the twin metal slabs in the middle of the room, remembering the kiss of chilly steel against her skin. “There’s much more at stake than that.”

His hand is warm on her shoulder.

“I understand,” he says humbly, though she’s fairly certain he doesn’t. Or perhaps he does. It’s difficult to tell how much Cal absorbs from any one moment. “There won’t be any mistakes.”

She hears the creak of wheels in the doorway before the door opens and Gordon pushes a gurney in. He wheels it to the centre of the room and applies the brakes. He nods politely to Jiaying, frowns at Cal, and departs.

Jiaying circles round the gurney slowly. Her footsteps seem disproportionately loud in the silence. She approaches it from the side and looks at the man strapped down.

Without his glasses, the face of her nightmares is squinting a little, peering short-sightedly up at her.

“Hello Whitehall,” she says quietly.

The man blinks a little, taking in her and Cal and the sterile surgery without any change in expression. She would admire his composure under the circumstances, but is instead vaguely repulsed by it. His impassive gaze reminders her of a reptile.

“This is a surprise,” he says, his tone as politely pleasant as if they’d met unexpectedly at a garden party. “I hadn’t expected to see you again. You’re even more special than I thought.”

He appears to sincerely mean it as a compliment, and a shiver passes through Jiying that might be nausea or rage. She loses her voice for a moment, but luckily Cal steps forward to backhand Whitehall with casual strength.

“You didn’t even say hello to me,” he says. “That’s just rude. How do you think that makes me feel?”  

Whitehall touches a tongue the corner of his mouth where the lip has split, unruffled by the violence.

“Dr Johnson,” he says coolly. “I imagine you’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”

“Cal,” Jiaying manages to say, a warning to her one. He immediately stops in the middle of drawing back to hit Whitehall again.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He smooths out his blue scrubs like they’re a suit he wrinkled, laughing self-consciously. “I’m getting ahead of myself. So many things to do, so many plans. I’ll go get things ready.”

“That would be best.”

Jiaying watches him walk over to the sink, but he seems to be stable. Or as stable as Cal ever is.

“How did you survive?” Whitehall says, drawing her attention back to him. He seems mildly curious, as if a specimen had performed an unexpected behavior. Which it probably had, for him.

She wonders if it would interrupt the procedure too much to carve off his face first.

“The same way you survived Director Coulson’s bullet,” she says. “My Gift is extensive.”

“Yes, it is.” Whitehall’s mouth curves in the faintest suggestion of a smile. “Thank you.”

Just a few cuts perhaps. Jiaying’s hand twitches towards the row of scalpels before she stops herself. More at stake, she reminds herself.

“I hadn’t planned on this,” she says out loud. “I never really thought about what I’d do if you ever came into my power. Mostly I just hoped never to encounter you ever again.”

When Coulson had told her Whitehall was alive, she’d had a brief panic attack, had had to lock herself in a bathroom and ride it out before composing herself and returning. Coulson, ever the gentleman, had tactfully refrained from commenting.

“If it occurred to me,” she continues. “I believed that I would just put a bullet in your head, and that would be the end of it. Like crushing the head of a snake.”

“Cut one head off,” Whitehall says instantly. “And two more –”

Jiaying gags him with the piece of plastic tubing sitting nearby for precisely that purpose.

“I’m _talking_ ,” she says, annoyed. “Good subjects don’t talk. They stay quiet so the people doing real work can hear themselves think.”

Was that a hint of fear in his eyes? She hopes so.

“I was going to shoot you,” she continues more calmly. “After letting the families of all your other victims take their pound of flesh – and here in Afterlife, there are _many_. Then it occurred to me what a waste that would be.”

The door hinges squeak as Gordon enters again, wheeling another gurney. This one he is careful with, taking care not to let it bump the doors or rattle too much.

Jiaying moves aside so that he can park it next to Whitehall’s. She looks down anxiously at their second patient.

“How is she?”  

“Sleeping peacefully. We’ve been monitoring her vital signs, in case the sedative was too strong, but she’s handling it fine so far.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“Not a soul. Lincoln took out the security cameras before we went in. To everyone it will look like she just disappeared.”

Jiaying nods. She mildly regrets the necessity of secrecy; she doesn’t like causing distress to a family who will be searching frantically for their loved one, no doubt imagining the very worst. She would have liked to tell them there is nothing to fear. Precisely the opposite, in fact. Sadly, this procedure must be kept an absolute secret. Even Shield must be kept in the dark. Their fledgling alliance might be promising – turning over Whitehall and his research had convinced even Jiaying of their good intentions – but they have not yet earned her complete trust.

Whitehall is craning his head to see the other gurney. 

“Do you recognise her?” Jiaying says. “You should. She rescued me from a cage, and put you in one. A good, noble person who sought to protect people, regardless of their origin. Imperfectly, of course – we all know how it ended. But noble nonetheless.” Jiaying shakes her head. “Now she is old and dying, while you remain young and vital with what you stole from me. The universe is a cruel place.”

Cal drops a tray of scalpels near Whitehall’s ear, making him jump. He’s starting to sweat now, as Cal sharpens a scalpel while whistling a jaunty tune.

Jaiying smiles at Whitehall.

“Sometimes we must help the universe along,” she says sweetly. “Thank you for making such extensive notes on your procedure. They were very helpful.”

“In fact, we came up with several ways to improve upon it,” Cal adds. “It was brilliant, obviously, for coming up with it over two days. But still, I think we can do better.” He selects a scalpel with a shining point. “Honey, can you check to see where that anaesthetist is at? I don’t want this lovely lady in any pain when we start.”

“Of course.” Jiaying squeezes his arm fondly. She really does love this man sometimes. “We want her to be comfortable.”

She bends down to press a gentle kiss to the forehead of the unconscious old woman. A benediction to one who saved her life and to whom she will soon be returning the favor, if all goes well.

“Welcome home, Peggy Carter,” she whispers. “I expect you will make better use of my Gift than your predecessor.”

And if she doesn’t… well. Jiaying’s gift can be passed on to more worthy recipients. That’s why they’re all here today, after all.

Whitehall starts screaming as Jiaying leaves; muffled howls of terror that are shut off by the door closing. Jiaying smiles, thinking of the garden beds that Lincoln has promised to build her when this is all over and done. 

Maybe Cal is right. Best day _ever_.


	2. Chapter 2

Peggy wakes in stages. The very old sleep lightly, and she hasn’t sleep so deeply in years.

She wakes once with a nurse adjusting her IV. That in itself is not unusual and she slips back under almost immediately. She wakes a second time in a room she hasn't seen before and this too is not unusual. Her mind has been fragmenting for years, and she is as accustomed to disorientation and lost time as it is possible to be. She can see her photographs on the bedside table, her books on the shelf, and she knows she must have been moved to another room. She sleeps again. 

The third time she wakes up, there is a young woman sitting beside her bed and reading a book. The girl's face carries terrible scars, but there is something familiar about her and Peggy has the sneaking feeling she has forgotten something important again. 

"Hello," she says, and her throat feels raspy and dry. 

The woman looks up and smiles as she puts her book aside. A lovely young woman, Peggy thinks. Underneath those scars, her face is striking; high cheekbones, a serene mouth, expressive dark eyes. 

"Hello, Peggy." Her voice is warm and kind. "Are you thirsty?" 

Peggy nods, and the woman pours a glass for her from a nearby jug. 

"My name is Jiaying. You've just come out of surgery, so some disorientation is normal." 

"I had surgery?" Peggy tries to sit up a little, expecting a tug of pain, but it doesn’t come. They must have her on the good drugs. "I'm sorry, my memory’s not what it used to be." 

"I know. We hope that will change soon." Jiaying holds the glass to Peggy's lips before Peggy can ask what she means by that. When she’s had enough, Jiaying puts the glass down on the bedside table, within easy reach and says: "How are you feeling?" 

"Fuzzy. A little loopy. So not so different from normal." 

"Any pain?" 

"No."

“None at all?”

“No, I feel…” Peggy pauses as the strangeness of that catches up. “…good.”

Old age brings pain. She has long accepted the aching joints and odd pains as the price of surviving the antics of her youth. Even lying down has discomfort that has long receded into the back of her awareness.

Right now she feels none of that. She feels _comfortable_.

She looks down and very nearly cries out at the sight of the hands resting on the blanket. They are slim, graceful hands with smooth pale skin. No wrinkles or sunspots, or any of the marks she’s gathered over the years. 

“My hands.” Her voice comes out as a croak “What’s wrong with my hands?”  

“Absolutely nothing,” Jiaying says soothingly.

Peggy’s heart is racing, but it’s not the frantic flutter that makes her feel like she’s dying. It comes with a surge of anger and fear that pours through her veins like strength.

“Help me up.”

“That’s probably not a good idea –”

“ _Help me up_.”

Jiaying comes round the other side of the bed where the IV stand is. She pulls back the covers and helps Peggy stand. Peggy’s legs feel wobbly, but stronger than they have in years. Very slowly, with Jiaying’s support, she walks to the mirror on the wall.

The face in the mirror is one she hasn’t seen in decades. The dark brown hair falls in waves around a smooth face, the eyes wide and horrified. She’s stricken with several conflicting impulses; a detached note that she really was very pretty, an inane desire to comfort the younger woman in the mirror, and a creeping lurking rage that’s growing stronger every second.

“What the hell did you do to me?” She says, and even her voice sounds different. Richer and fuller.

“It’s a gift.”

“I didn’t _ask_ for this.”

“Which is why you’re perfect.” Jiaying’s tone is just the right balance between warm and matter of fact.

Peggy can barely spare any attention. She’s too busy staring at her reflection, transfixed by her younger face. On closer inspection, she looks like she’s in her fourties. Old enough to have survived her share of chaos, young enough to survive a good deal more.

When she looks down, the feet resting on the floor belong to a much younger woman. It even looks as if someone has given her a pedicure while she was under; her toenails gleam with a very faint hint of clear polish. Her legs are lithe, if deplorably lacking in muscle. When she peers down the front of her surgical gown, there's no sign of stitches or incisions, just a new strip of pink scar tissue down her middle, looking as if it was made months ago. Everything else has reverted to positions they haven’t held in a good long time.

It’s all frighteningly right and wrong.

“What did you give me?” She says. “A version of the super soldier serum? That rarely ends well.”

“Nothing like that,” Jiaying assures her.

Something else then, Peggy thinks. Perhaps the GH formula they were working on with the blue humanoid they found in a Hydra camp all those years ago. The project scientists were interested in its regenerative properties, even if they hadn’t managed to get it to work before she retired.

There’s something there. Something about the camp, if she could just remember…

“I didn’t know Hydra was so advanced,” she says lightly. “Super soldiers is one thing, but de-aging is impressive. You should go private.”

Her shot in the dark pays off as she sees Jiaying’s little moue of distaste when she says the word ‘Hydra’.

“We’re not Hydra.”

“Shield then?” Peggy had heard about splinter factions attempting to re-establish themselves.

“Not Shield either. Come, lie back down and I’ll explain everything.”

Peggy allows herself to be drawn back toward the bed.

“Yes, perhaps sitting down would be… I think the shock…” She gives an artistic wobble, and when Jiaying moves to catch her, Peggy punches her in the face.

Jiaying stumbles back with an ‘oof’. Peggy quickly disentangles herself from the IV. She knows how to do it from years of watching her nurses deal with the bloody things.

“Peggy,” Jiaying says, holding her hands out placatingly. She doesn’t sound bothered or even agitated, just mildly concerned. “It’s alright, I promise you. You’re safe here.”

“I’d rather not take your word for it, thank you.”

Peggy flings a photo frame – one of her favorites, dammit – and when the woman flinches from the smash inches from her head, Peggy runs out the door.

She’s in the hallway of what looks like a communal hospice. She nearly slams into a trio of young men who are very startled to see her. And she’s in a surgical gown with no shoes.

“Ms Carter!” one of them says. “What are you doing up? You should be resting in your room.”

He reaches for her arm and she grabs and twists, flinging him over her shoulder. It’s a throw she hasn’t executed in years, but apparently these muscles still remember. She slams the next one into a wall and kicks the last hard enough to send him crashing into a cart filled with towels. 

She runs, nearly staggering as her muscles smoothly obey her command. A young woman walks out of a room, then squeaks and jump out of the way as Peggy charges past. 

“Ms Carter, wait – Ms Carter –”

Peggy shoves open swinging doors and walks into direct sunlight.

It looks like a small village, all quaint little huts with a faintly Chinese aesthetic. A few young people are wandering about on daily tasks, and have paused to stare at her. There’s a blue mountain looming in the distance, and it’s absolutely nowhere she recognises.

Panic hits her, but she didn’t survive as an agent by freezing up. She just has to find some clothes, steal a car, and start driving. A small village like this has to have somewhere nearby for supplies. Nothing is totally self-sufficient these days.

“Peggy.” That’s Jiaying’s voice behind her. “It’s alright.”

“Stop saying that.” Peggy spins round, adrenaline singing at the prospect of violence, at something to hit in order to deal with all this. “Where the _bloody_ hell am I?”

“I was going to tell you,” Jiaying says with a faint hint of reproach. “Until you hit me in the face.”

“Come closer, I’ll do it again.”

Jiaying looks her over with a smile.

“You’ve really taken to it. We thought you’d be bed-ridden for a lot longer.” She looks fondly proud, and that more than anything frightens Peggy. There are a lot more subtle ways to compromise agents than torture, tools like Stockholm syndrome that are frighteningly effective in the right hands.

“Whatever you want from me,” she says. “You’re not getting it.”

“I don’t want anything from you Peggy. Please, come inside and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

Peggy notes the three young men who’ve caught up with Jiaying, the two or three other people who’ve drifted closer. She lets herself relax, uncurling her fists and sloping her shoulders as if in surrender. When the first boy reaches her, she punches him.

From there on, it’s a dog-fight. She’s good, but she hasn’t been in the field a long time and this body might be younger, but it’s still out of practice. They’re hampered by an unwillingness to hurt her, but there’s a lot more of them.

“Yasmine,” Jiaying says in a tone of command and a casually dressed girl steps hastily forward as Peggy is pinned by two boys as she tries to strangle a third. She tries to squirm out of reach, instinctively knowing that she does not want this girl touching her.

“No–”

“Sorry about this,” the girl says, and her hand touches Peggy’s bare arm.

Everything goes black.

* * *

Her dreams are strange 

She’s back in the forties, after a raid on a Hydra base. They captured a Nazi scientist, a truly despicable creature called Whitehall, and a number of truly bizarre assets, including the body of a blue humanoid.

Peggy was treating Whitehall’s only surviving test subject, a young Asian woman who can’t seem to speak any English and won’t let the medic near her. As they’d found her locked in a cage, Peggy couldn’t fault her distrust of other people’s good intentions.

Morita had been apologetic when he came to get Peggy.

“We were hoping she might take better to a woman,” he’d said. “I mean, not that you’re not–“

“I get your meaning,” Peggy had said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The girl had blood on her knee, but kept her hands over the wound and shook her head when the medic tried to come near. The medic passed over responsibility to Peggy with what looked like relief.

“Just get it disinfected and covered up,” he said, passing the med-kit. “Don’t need anything fancy, but gangrene’s not fun.”

“Understood,” Peggy said. “Go see if anyone else needs you. We need to be on the truck in twenty minutes.”

She sat down beside the girl, kept her voice low and gentle as she laid out the supplies.

“I know you’re scared. You have every right to be. You’d be mad not to be, after being in Whitehall’s custody. But I promise you, everything is going to be alright. You’re safe now.”

She didn’t expect the girl to understand. She just hoped the tone would calm her. The girl still flinched away when Peggy tried to touch her.

“Do you know Chinese?” She asked Gabe, who was the only other person other than Morita in the room.

“Bits and pieces of Mandarin,” Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know that I’m saying it right, because she doesn’t seem to understand.”

“She might not be Chinese,” Morita remarked laconically. "With the war on, lots of folks are getting getting displaced." 

“Or she understands perfectly well,” Peggy said, gaze still on the girl. “And she’s keeping it to herself.”

The girl’s gaze met hers and skittered away again. Might be coincidence. Might not. Peggy kept talking as she coaxed the girl into letting go of her leg so Peggy could take a look. There was blood smeared on her knee and her hands, but no graze or cut to show where it came from.

“I thought you said she was hurt,” she said, frowning.

“She was,” Morita answered. “Knocked over a tray when Dum Dum startled her and fell right onto one of the scalpels. Scared the hell of Dum Dum, he though she was going to bleed out right there.”

“That’ll teach him to flirt with POW,” Gabe said affectionately. “Tell me again how he went light-headed and had to sit down. After all the crap he gave Falsworth last month.”

“I guess he doesn’t like seeing women bleed. I’m not fond of it myself.”

Peggy listened to their banter with only half an ear. The girl was sitting very still as Peggy checked her over for another wound. There was nothing. Peggy very nearly dismissed it – they have bigger things to worry about right now – but for the fact they were in a research facility run by Whitehall, a man who’d been in Schmidt and Zola’s inner circle. Human evolution had been one of their priorities. And she had seen wounds close over and disappear like this before. On Steve.

Peggy realised the girl’s stillness was the stillness of a deer caught in headlights. A mouse frozen in the gaze of a predator. She looked absolutely terrified. 

“It’s alright,” Peggy told her. She picked up one of the bandages, wrapped it tight about the girl’s knee, then another layer, tying it securely so that it was impossible to see the extent of the injury, or lack thereof. “Keep this on. Don’t take it off. You understand? And you’ll probably limp for a while. Painful injuries mean limping.”

The girl met her gaze for an instant, then ducked her head again, hair shadowing her face. Peggy stood up.

“Get her in the truck. See if you can find out if she has family nearby, or friends we can drop her off to.”

She stepped outside the bunker and took a deep cleansing breath. The girl’s terror put her in mind of Bucky, who was never able to talk about what Zolad had done to him except in the most abstract, round-about terms. If Peggy had a bullet and a free choice of targets, it would end up in that that nasty little toad. 

Dum Dum walked over.

“Whitehall wants to talk,” he said.

“I care very little what Whitehall wants.”

“He says it’s about that girl.”

Peggy paused.  

“On the other hand, it can’t hurt to hear him out,” she smoothly amended.

Whitehall was being held in the final truck, hands cuffed together, ignomiously squeezed between a crate of equipment and a bag of flour.

“You want to tell me something?” Peggy said in a bored tone.

“Yes.” Whitehall smiled serenely. “The woman, you want to keep her.”

“Do I?”

“There’s something special about her. I’ve been looking for someone who could survive touching the artifact, and she was the only one.”

“So?”

“I could make history with her. I’m your superiors would agree.”

Peggy thought of the rock scattered throughout Whitehall’s lab; the remains of the people he’d used to make history.

“The difference is the kind of history we're looking to make." 

Peggy got out of the van and walked briskly away, Dum Dum at her heels. Out of earshot of Whitehall or anyone else, she said:

“Speaking hypothetically, what would you advise if I had found something that could re-open Project Rebirth?”

“The one that made Rogers?” 

“The same.”

“Hypothetically?” Dum Dum tipped his hat back and scratched his head. “I’d bury the damn thing. Nothing good ever came out of trying to make super soldiers ‘cept Cap, and they nearly killed him doing it.”

“I thought as much.” Peggy pursed her lips, stares off into the trees. “I think we should drop the girl off at the next town. No point in carrying her thousands of miles for a debrief when we have plenty of evidence already.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

At the next town, Peggy pressed a wad of cash into the girl’s hand and told her to leave the region, Gabe translating it as best he could into Mandarin.

“The Allies would be real happy to make another Cap,” he said quietly to Peggy as they watched the woman disappear into the crowd.

“There’ll never be another Captain Rogers,” Peggy said, equally quiet.

“That’s God’s honest truth. They broke the mold with him.”

She was prepared to plead ignorance when Whitehall spilled his secrets, but he never did. The evidence of his actions disgusted the higher-ups enough that they accepted Peggy’s recommendation that he was unsuitable for Project Paperclip. He was tossed into a deep dark legal hole, and Peggy made it her mission over the next fifty-odd years to keep him there. 

She never sees that girl again, until oneday in her nineties she wakes up to find her sitting by her bedside, not having aged a day. 

* * *

Peggy wakes with a dry mouth and sun shining in her eyes. She’s in the room again. No restraints in sight. The IV is attached again, but her head feels clear, so whatever that clear solution is, it’s probably not drugs. Jiaying is sitting beside her bed.  

“We’ve met before,” Peggy says, voice raspy with sleep. “You were the woman from Whitehall’s base.”

“You _do_ remember then. I wondered.”  

Peggy takes in the youthful face, the scars that weren’t there in the forties and says:

“What happened to you?” 

Jiaying’s expression doesn’t so much shut off as it gently retreats.

“Something terrible,” she says, and Peggy believes her.

She sits up slowly. She doesn’t hurt, despite being in her most vicious fight in decades. She doesn’t even seem to be bruised.

“What did you do to me? Why am I –” She indicates her face. “–like this?” 

“So now you ask, instead of hitting me?” Jiaying shakes her head, smiling a little. “I apologise, that was uncalled for. You were scared, in a strange place and you had every reason not to trust me. Lashing out was logical. I said we needed to explain things to you beforehand, prepare you for the transition, but I was overruled.”

“I see.” Peggy doesn’t really, but she knows the value of pretending.

“I’m not explaining this very well. We – my people – had a one-time only gift to offer. It could not be given to any of our own people, for scientific reasons too complicated to get into, and there is a very, very short list of humans that we consider worthy.”

Humans. She’d said humans. Peggy keeps careful control of her expression, even as her mind races at the implications. 

“So I made the list,” she says. “Because of what happened in Whitehall’s camp?”

“That’s right.” Jiaying moves as if she’d take Peggy’s hand, but Peggy pulls her hand away and Jiaying doesn’t force the issue. “You may not feel it right now, Peggy, but this is a gift.”

“Forgive me if I don’t immediately trust your word.”   

“Take as long as you need. How’s your head by the way? Are you feeling muddled at all?”

“No, I –”

And that’s when she realises her mind hadn’t slipped. Not once. Normally she’d have episodes several times a day, especially when agitated or upset. Today she’d been out of her mind with anger and panic, but not _out of her mind_. Her thoughts had been as sharp and clear as cut glass, grounded firmly in the present.

Jiaying can’t begin to know what that means to Peggy. The fading of her body over the years Peggy could manage, because it was the inevitable price of age. What had truly, deeply frightened her was the loss of the mind that had once been her greatest weapon. And now it’s back, with an unknown price tag attached.

Her shock must show on her face, because Jiaying smiles with unmistakable satisfaction.

“A gift,” she repeats. “I’ll let you rest now.”


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m leaving.”

Peggy announces this at dinner with Jiaying, one month after waking up in Afterlife. They dine together every few days so that Jiaying can ‘help her transition’, which in reality is just her leading Peggy around in conversational circles, revealing absolutely nothing.

Peggy’s been informed that Jiaying’s interest in her is an honour, but she remains cynical about the truthfulness of this. Even if she hadn’t been brought to a secret village without her consent and subjected to a mysterious procedure that no one will tell her anything about, a lifetime working for Shield taught her to tell when someone is working an angle.

Jiaying takes a moment to respond to Peggy’s announcement, chewing and swallowing before dabbing at her mouth with a napkin.

“If you like,” she says, irritatingly unruffled. “Where would you like to go?”

“Elsewhere. Will that be a problem?”

“No. I’ve told you before. You can leave as soon as you’re recovered.”

Peggy wants to scream at that refrain that she’s been hearing day in and day out. Once you’re recovered. Once you’re recovered. Every time she pushes to do anything more strenuous than lie in bed, she’s politely re-directed with those frustrating words. Anger, however, will get her absolutely nowhere with Jiaying so she reigns herself in and says calmly:

“I am recovered. Your husband said so this morning. My levels or what have you are back up to where they should be, and I’m not showing any signs of cellular degradation. I’m as recovered as I’m going to be.”

“Then you may go,” Jiaying says. It’s a surprisingly easy victory – too easy, Peggy thinks. She’s proven correct a moment later when Jiaying adds: “May I offer some advice though?”

“I can hardly stop you.”

“The procedure is in many ways experimental. There has only ever been one other that this was attempted on, and we never knew the full extent of what he received. It’s possible he himself didn’t know.”

Peggy stares at the woman, somewhere between incredulity and rage. She seems to get angry more often of late; Cal says it might be her hormones re-balancing themselves. But Jiaying’s casual admission of experimental surgery on Peggy’s unwilling body would have enraged her anyway, regardless of her state of mind.

“Your point?” She says tightly.

“You may have more than a resistance to age. Some abilities, without training, can be dangerous. Stay on a little longer, until you are certain of what you are capable of. It will be safer for yourself, and the people outside.”

Peggy narrows her eyes.

“If you have a specific concern, Jiaying, say it. Don’t waste my time with cryptic warnings.”

“Very well.” Jiaying swirls her wine meditatively. “There is one particular ability that I suspect you have. For privacy reasons I won’t tell you the specifics, but without preparation it can and will kill people. I would like to test you before you leave.”

“What kind of test?”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t work.”

“Is there a possibility of it harming me?”

Jiaying quirks a patronising eyebrow.

“All Gifts, no matter how benign, come with a possibility of harm. The best way to prevent it is understand what we are capable of and how to control it.”

“So I could be hurt?”

“Yes.”

“But the danger is no more or less than what you put your other students through?”

“Moderately more, given the nature of the Gift. We will take every precaution to minimise the possibility.”

“And if I do have this Gift?”

“Then you may stay and learn to control it. I am well equipped to do so. Or you may leave, but you are at least aware of what you are capable of.” Jiaying sips her wine, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

Peggy’s first instinct is to throw Jiaying’s offer back in her teeth, and maybe a glass of wine in her face. But caution holds her back. If Jiaying is being honest, it’s not something Peggy can afford to ignore.

“Alright then,” she says, woman enough to admit she has been out-manouvered. “Show me tomorrow.”

They smile at each other with bland distrust, two old women with too-young faces. 

* * *

After dinner, Peggy goes on her evening walk through Afterlife. She’d started the habit when she was finally allowed out of bed. People had stared at her at first. By now, she barely rates a second look 

The village is small, just big enough to fill half a football field. The buildings are arranged in seemingly random patterns, leaving room for artistically maintained gardens and decorative pools filled with lazy koi. It’s only when looking at the detail that it becomes clear how much effort had gone into it. Everything flows into one another; the pathways follow deliberate geometric patterns, the floors in every house are made of the same kind of wood, trees grown and shaped to shade particular areas. It speaks of years, even generations of love and dedication.

But the truly fascinating part – the part that Shield past and present would kill to be allowed to study – are the _people_.

The first time she’d seen a teenage boy juggling fire, Peggy had thought it was a trick or sleight of hand. It hadn’t clicked even when she’d run into a girl with the claws, who’d smiled to reveal sharp fangs and said ‘excuse me’ as she passed her on the path. Young people did like to dress up and do that thing where they pretended to be monsters or aliens or what have you. It had only really hit her that this was all real when she met an older woman, who could cast her tattoos as very impressive illusions. Seeing a glowing eagle peel itself from a woman’s shoulder and take to the air was one way to have your eyes opened.

Peggy had had a million questions, very few of which were answered. The people here aren’t comfortable talking about their abilities to outsiders, which Peggy thinks is a rubbish stance to take when they were the ones who’d brought her here in the first place. Most of what she knows, she’d deduced herself by piecing together information or eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.

She’s gathered that they all are or will be Gifted, and that this village is some kind of rite of passage in their society. Everyone here is either a young adult or something called a ‘transitioner’. (Or Cal, but Peggy was willing to chalk him up to nepotism.) A transitioner seems to be a position of authority, and of all the transitioners, Jiaying is unanimously agreed to be the best. Peggy would very much like to know exactly what the position entails, but that is something no one has ever discussed in her hearing, apparently finding it too self-evident to spell out.

The Gifts themselves _must_ have a common source, either genetically inherited or artificially induced by some means. It’s the only possibility that makes sense. It’s cruel to say, but with rare exceptions, Gifted people tend to be erratic; either so mad as to take the risks that earn their abilities in the first place, or driven that way by the pressures of them. Even the very best, like the Stark boy, are eccentric and fiercely independent. Gifted communities larger than ten or so like-minded individuals simply didn’t happen, not unless there was some other common factor binding them together.

It’s all very exciting and troubling, especially since Shield never had the slightest suspicion that an entire society of Gifted people existed. Then again, Shield never noticed the secret Nazi cult in its own ranks, so Peggy was not going to put a great stack of confidence in it.

(She tries not to think about Hydra or Shield these days. She no longer has the unwinding of her mind to shield her from the knowledge of just how deeply she failed.)

Interestingly, whatever they had done to Peggy was separate and distinct from what their own people went through. Gordon had made that very clear. He doesn’t count her as one of them, considering her an artificial freak that has no place in Afterlife. Peggy doesn’t give a rat’s ass what that he thinks of her; she just wants to know what the hell they’d done to her in the first place.

Distracted by her thoughts, she turns a corner and finds a familiar, hooded figure sitting by a decorative pool, in exactly the place she must pass. Damn. Now she must either keep going or turn around and lose face.

She opts to do neither, walking up to the figure and saying crisply:

“Good evening, Raina.”

The woman turns her head slightly, and her eyes gleam in the darkness beneath her hood. 

“You’ve been having dinner with Jiaying.”

“Yes. Just as I did two nights ago, and two nights ago before that. You won’t impress me with your visions.”

“Still the skeptic.” Raina makes a small noise that might be amusement. “Come sit with me. It’s lonely out here.”

Peggy doesn’t grace that with an answer. Raina manipulates like she breathes; without thought or effort. It’s going to get her into trouble oneday. But Raina wants to tell her something and Peggy wants to hear it. She’s not as skeptical of Raina’s gift as she pretends.

She sits down beside Raina, close enough to be friendly, far enough to avoid getting scratched by Raina’s spines by accident. The breeze is gentle here, the stars friendly.

“Jiaying will take you out of the village tomorrow,” Raina says after a moment. 

“Yes, she’s going to test me for a Gift. She says it has to be away from the village. Don't tell me she’s going to try and kill me.”

“I’m not here to tell you anything. That’s between you and her.” Raina pauses a beat and adds: “But since you ask, no. She’s not going to try and kill you. The test may kill you, but not because she wants it to.”

“Good to know.”

“You won’t come back though. Either way. This will be your last night here.” Raina says it quite matter of factly, as if it’s only of minimal interest to her.

“Any last advice then?”

“Don’t go to your niece. If you go to her, you’ll end up in a lab, and she’ll die trying to save you.”

Once again, Raina’s voice is utterly calm; a rich, beautiful voice that was lovely to listen to for the split second before its meaning sunk in.

“I… you saw that?” 

“As clearly as I see you know.”

Peggy is sincerely rattled. She hadn’t told anyone of what she’d do when she left, but her plan had been to seek out Sharon. Sharon was a smart girl, with her head screwed on straight and a high-ranking position within a respectable intelligence organisation. Together they could work out what to do with Peggy. 

“What goes wrong?” She asks, probing for more information.

“I don’t know. All I see is a lab. You’re tied down and scientists in white coats are taking samples of blood. There’s an alarm, and your niece kicks the door in. One of the scientists has a gun and shoots her in the head while she’s untying you.”

Peggy’s fingers clench into fists. The vision Raina paints is horrifically convincing. She can see fierce, loyal Sharon coming for her, not letting anyone get in her way. She’s reckless in a way that’s all too familiar, particularly when someone she cares about is in danger. Peggy wants to believe that Raina is lying. But Raina, so far as she can tell, is scrupulously honest about her visions. Everything else is fair game, but not her visions.

“I’ll take it into consideration,” Peggy says finally and Raina nods as if it’s no more or less than she’d expected.

“It’s a cruel world Jiaying has dragged you into,” she muses. “You cannot go back to your old life, and you will never be completely one of us. You exist on the margins now, the freaks and oddities.”

Peggy has the feeling that Raina includes herself in that last statement, even though she is one of these people in a way that Peggy is not. 

As she stands to go, Raina adds:

“When he finds you, take the red door.”

“What?”

Raina sounds vaguely irritated when she repeats:

“The _red_ door. Not green. Red.”

With that, she walks away. Peggy huffs, annoyed. 

Honestly. Bizarre woman. 


	4. Chapter 4

Peggy sleeps poorly that night, but is in a good mood when she meets Gordon and Jiaying at the communal area. 

“Packed already?” Jiaying says, eyeing Peggy’s backpack.

“I had it on good authority I wouldn’t be coming back.”

Because she’s waiting for it, she sees Jiaying’s flicker of irritation.

“You shouldn’t take Raina’s word on everything. She has her own agenda.”

“Doesn’t everyone.” Peggy takes inappropriate, childish glee in Jiaying’s displeasure, and is careful to hide it. She looks at Gordon, whose eyeless gaze is as unreadable as ever. “Shall we?”

She holds out a hand innocently, like she isn’t offering a passive-aggressive challenge. Gordon at least never made any pretence of liking her and she smiles sweetly, barely resisting the temptation of batting her eyelids.

Gordon accepts her hand with a sour expression like only age and maturity kept him from hissing ‘lab-rat’ out the side of his mouth. He takes Jiaying’s hand with his other, and Peggy has one last look around Afterlife before they all blink out of existence.

They re-appear in a forest. The air is colder here and Peggy lets go of Gordon’s hand to zip her jacket further closed.

“Where are we?”

“The Canadian wilderness.”

“Very isolated then.” And not many people around to get hurt. Exactly what kind of abilities is Jiaying testing for?

They walk a short distance and Peggy finds out she’s mistaken about there being no people nearby. Down the hill is a bunker that looks as if it was built back in the fifties. The car beside it looks considerably newer.

“What’s this?” Peggy asks.

“A Hydra base,” Jiaying answers.

Peggy tenses, but Jiaying is unreadable, Gordon even less so.

“How is this part of a test?” She says warily.

“It’s a very important part of the test. Close your eyes.” When Peggy just looks at her suspiciously, Jiaying sighs. “You’ve trusted me this far.”

Raina  _had_  said Jiaying wouldn’t try to kill her.

Peggy reluctantly closes her eyes.

“Now what?” 

“Reach out with your senses. Imagine how a person feels, all the small things that let you know they’re there even if you can’t see them. The heat of their skin, the smell of their hair, the sound of their breath. Use these things to paint a picture of me that’s not visual.”

Peggy does as she's told, trying to visualize Jiaying without visualizing her.

“You know where I am,” Jiaying says. “Now where is Gordon?” 

“Over there,” Peggy points.

“Very good.”

“It’s not that hard. He’s been here this whole time.”

“Perhaps you are right. How many people are on the base?”

“Five.”

The question is asked so casually, and Peggy answers it so automatically, it takes a moment to realise what just happened. Her eyes fly open.

Jiaying is smiling.

“You’re a quick study. It took me months to work out what I was doing and years to truly harness it. But then, I was working without guidance.”

“How did I know that?” Peggy says. She’s unnerved by her own certainty. There are five people on the base, she knows it in a way that’s not visual or audible or any sense she can describe. The closest she could describe it is as heat, but temperature is nothing to do with it. Those ghostly presences drift on the edge of her awareness like will-o-wisps.

“Just an extra set of senses,” Jiaying says. “With practice you’ll be able to tell where everyone is within a hundred metres.”

“A useful skill.” Peggy tries to focus, to see if she can read anything else. “Is this how you see the world?” She addresses this to Gordon, who shakes his head and says curtly:

“No.” 

“Gordon sees connections and patterns, like a web,” Jiaying says. “We all see the world according to our Gift.”

“Bizarre.” Peggy shakes her head. “It’s fading now.”

“It takes practise. Eventually you’ll be able to do it without effort. Now for the next part.”

Jiaying pulls out a gun.

Peggy tenses again, but Jiaying hands it to her, handle first.

“Can you take out five Hydra agents?”

“You’re not going to help?”

“We could, but I thought you could use the outlet.”

Well. She’s not wrong.

Peggy puts her backback down and strips off her jacket.  She checks the gun, finds it’s a model she’s not familiar with. The weight’s all different.

“This is new.”

“It’s an Icer. It stuns instead of kills.”

“Pity.” She’d have liked to put a few bullets into Hydra, as revenge for them destroying her organisation from the inside out. “Gordon, will you be so good as to give me a lift inside?”

* * *

They appear inside closed walls, while a Hydra tech stares at them in open-mouth shock across a keyboard. Then he lunges for the alarm on the wall and Peggy shoots him. He goes down, eyes open and vacant, blue veins forming on his skin. When she checks his pulse, it’s steady.

“Better hurry,” Gordon says. “It only lasts half an hour. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“You’re not staying?”

“You said you could handle five.”

He disappears and she hisses ‘prick’ into the empty room. One of these days she’s going to shoot Gordon and not feel at all bad about it.

She finds two agents still in bed and shoots them, rendering them unconscious. Another surprises both of them by walking out of the kitchen with a half-eaten bit of toast between his teeth and a cup of coffee. He manages to yell before she knocks him out.

The last one must have been alerted by the sound because Peggy can't find her anywhere. After five minutes of searching, Peggy stops and focuses, using the trick that Jiaying showed her to identify everyone nearby. 

The ghostly presence behind her has her diving to the side, just in time to avoid the wrench swinging at her head. She rolls, tries to bring her gun up only to have it knocked out of her hands.

“Did Shield send you?” The woman demands. Peggy bares her teeth in a vicious smile.

“I’ve had an awful month. You just make a nice outlet.”

Peggy tackles the woman and proceeds to beat the ever-loving shit out of her.

* * *

Later, she handcuffs everyone to a solid iron pipe and goes out front to meet Jiaying. Jiaying looks as smug as a cat that’s been out killing small animals and knows you can’t prove a damn thing.

“Feel better?”

“Somewhat. I still don’t trust you.”

“Oneday.” Jiaying steps carefully around her. “Shall we see if they –”

Peggy hears the bang a split second before something slams into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her. The next moment she’s lying on the ground and Jiaying is hovering over her. Everything seems surreal and distant, except for the dull ache in her stomach that is rapidly building to a burning roar.

Gordon appears in a flash of blue, tossing a gun to the ground. 

“Sniper on the ridge,” he says. “I took care of it.” His head tilts thoughtfully. “You’re bleeding.”

“Go sit on a flag pole,” Peggy manages to get out. Jiaying puts pressure on her stomach, and suddenly all the pain that her mind had shut off was  _right there_. She doesn’t scream, but it’s a near thing.

Jiaying and Gordon are talking, but Peggy can’t register the words, doesn’t know anything except that she’s bleeding out. Gordon disappears and reappears with one of the Hydra agents in tow.

“It’s alright, beautiful,” Jiaying says, fingertips stroking Peggy’s face, gaze intent on hers. “I’ll show you the way.”

Gordon forces the Hydra agent down next to Peggy. Jiaying lifts Peggy’s hands and lays them on the agent’s face, holding them there.

“You could sense him before,” she says. “You could feel his heat, his energy. Now I want you to focus on pulling it to you.”

Peggy doesn’t understand. The world is blurring at the edges.

“Peggy, you’re going to die if you don’t listen to me. Focus on what he feels like. Focus on his warmth, his life, his energy. Focus on that and pull it to you. You have the power, you can do this –”

Peggy can’t pay attention anymore. All she can feel is the agent’s skin hot under her hands. He’s so warm, and she’s so cold. If she could just…

“That’s it,” Jiaying is saying approvingly. “That’s it, Peggy. You’ve got it.”

It’s…  _wonderful_. It’s heat and life and bliss. It’s fizzing like soda bubbles, filling her up with froth and light. She has to have more.

She pulls and pulls until abruptly there’s nothing more to pull on. Like sucking up the last of a cool drink of water and still being achingly thirsty.

She opens her eyes in protest and stares into the face of a dead man. The Hydra agent’s mouth is open, his eyes over sightlessly, his skin darkened and sagging like someone had sucked all the colour out of him. Her fingernails are digging into his forehead.

She lets go and he thumps to the ground.

“What –” She can’t find the words, can’t put it together. “What –”

“You’re not done.” Jiaying is behind her, grasping her hands in a surprisingly strong grip. “Wait a moment, Peggy.”

“What’s happening?” It’s a dream. Surely it’s a dream. Everything is too bright, too sharp. Gordon is dragging over another agent, a woman this time who’s screaming and begging. Her voice is high and thin and sharp, and oddly distant, like a recording gone scratchy and faded.

Jiaying lifts Peggy’s hands and cups them to the woman’s cringing face.

“It’s alright,” she murmurs in Peggy’s ear. “Just do what comes naturally.”

Peggy stares at the woman’s tear-stained face, and is fascinated by the pulse, the knot, the bright warm something she can sense. It’s so much clearer close up.

“Close your eyes,” Jiaying whispers, and Peggy closes her eyes and  _pulls_.

* * *

Reality is slow to come back. Everything is so bright and shiny. Peggy is fascinated by the sunlight through the leaves, the smell of loam, the patterns of bark on the trees. She lies with her head in Jiaying’s lap and giggles like a stoned school girl, trying to weave sunlight through her fingers 

Unease creeps up slowly, a gradually dawning knowledge of something not right. She tenses and Jiaying’s fingers run through her hair, kneading her scalp like someone soothing a cat. She relaxes into it. It’s so nice to be held. She hasn’t been held like this in years. It’s been all sterile hospital beds and cold sheets.

She says as much to Jiaying, who smiles and says she will hold her as long as she likes. She then starts humming a tune, which Peggy vaguely recognises. Something about a daisy. She closes her eyes, lets the tune rise and fall behind her eyes, the words coming to her.

_…Daisy, Daisy… I’m mad with love for you…_

Peggy opens her eyes.

She doesn’t know how long she lay in that stupor, but the fog has lifted. She turns her head a little to the side, knowing what she’ll see, but hoping to be wrong nonetheless.

There are two bodies lying several metres away. The woman is sprawled on her back like a discarded doll. The man’s legs are curled in an unnatural position, his face pressed into the dirt. She can see one eye open, glazed over.

Peggy disentangles herself from Jiaying, who doesn’t try to stop her. She stands upright, swaying a little as she stares down at the two people she’d killed… No that’s not right. Killing means a bullet, means fast and clean and efficient, and something she’s done many times before. This is something else. Something  _other_.

She staggers away into the forest. Her legs don’t work right, but that might be the shock. She walks blindly, pushing through the trees, her only thought to be somewhere else other than here. It’s not until she sinks to her knees, shaking, that she realises she’s not in any pain.

Her shirt has a bloodstained hole. A place where a bullet went through. She lifts her shirt and finds smooth, whole skin. There’s a very faint paleness about the size of the tip of one finger, like she’d left a dollop of sunscreen on while sunbathing, but no blood, no wound. Perfectly healed.

Her stomach contracts abruptly and she leans over to vomit into the leaf litter. She brings up her breakfast, dry-retching until all she can taste is bile. It’s still not enough. She can feel that pulse, that surge of energy inside her, crawling through her veins. It won’t get out.

Eventually there are footsteps in the leaf litter and Jiaying joins her, sitting down gracefully just out of reach.

“What am I?” Peggy croaks.

“Gifted.”

“No. Teleportation is a gift. Foresight is a gift. This is–” She clenches her fists, remembering the feel of warm skin and that sweet rush. “This is a curse.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Our Gifts are what we make of them. Trust me, you can learn to live with this.”

“What the hell do you know about it.”

“Quite a lot. I’ve been living with our Gift for quite some time.”

 _Our_. She’d said  _our_.

Peggy slowly turned to look at Jiaying, at that ageless face.

“This is how you did it. This is how you didn’t age.” It comes out as an accusation. Peggy knows of no other way it could come out.

Jiaying doesn’t wince, clearly having expected this reaction.

“To live this long, I’ve had to make compromises,” she says. “It doesn’t need to be often. Once every few decades is enough, unless I'm badly hurt.”

“You’ve  _killed_  people.”

“Yes. Every so often one of the Elders will offer themselves to me. It’s a gentle way to go, I’m told, and there are worse ways to go than in the arms of a friend, surrounded by loved ones.”

Peggy opens her mouth, closes it again.

“Then if you only take volunteers, what the hell was that back there?”

“Hydra agents,” Jiaying says dismissively. “They deserve worse.”

“They were people.”

“You’re unutterably naïve.”

“I’m ninety-six years old and I made my career building an international spy organisation. Don’t you dare call me naïve.”

“You have  _no idea_ –” Jiaying breaks off, breathing a little hard. It’s the closest Peggy has seen her come to losing her composure. “There are monsters in the world, Peggy. You know that, you rescued me from one. I am not ashamed to say I will do  _anything_  to protect my people.”

Silence falls. Birds call in the distance, the wind making a soft susurration through the leaves.

“How did you do it?” Peggy asks dully. “How did you make me like this?”

There’s a pause before Jiaying speaks, very carefully. 

“Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a monster that put a woman in a cage.”

Peggy looks up, but Jiaying isn’t looking at her. She’s staring into the distance, lost in some dark corner of memory. Her voice is faintly sing-song, reciting the words as if by rote.

“Fortunately a brave warrior happened along that saved the woman and locked up the monster instead. But the cage didn’t hold forever and eventually the monster got out and tracked the woman down again. He cut her up, piece by piece, and took her organs for himself, because he knew they held the secret of immortality and would keep him young. He kept her alive and awake while he did it, because…” Here Jiaying’s fairy-tale recitation falters, and she says vaguely: “I don’t know why he did it. Maybe he liked it that way, maybe he genuinely didn’t care. I don’t know.”

Peggy has gone cold. She reaches out, but doesn’t quite dare touch.

“Jiaying…”

Jiayng ignores her, doesn’t even look at her.

“The woman was strong though. Stronger than she knew, and she escaped and healed. She promised herself that she would not let what happened to her happen to her people. That her sacrifice and her suffering would have meaning.”

It’s said in such a way that Peggy knows Jiaying’s repeated this to herself, over and over again. An idea to cling to, to keep herself sane.

“You’re talking about Whitehall. He got out? He was that one that did this to you?” She is seeing Jiaying’s scars in a new, awful light. Seeing  _Jiaying_  in a new light. A woman that’s been horrifically broken and never quite recovered. She might have healed physically, but she wasn’t  _whole_. “Where is he now?”

Jiaying just gives her a blank, distant look like she doesn’t really see her.

“Jiaying, where is he?” Peggy repeats.

“Why do you want to know?”

“So I can kill him.” As she should have done when she had the chance. She should have put a bullet in his skull and thrown him out the back of the truck. The Commandoes would have covered for her. Too little, too late now.

Jiaying blinks and finally seems to focus properly on Peggy.

“You’d do that for me?” She says curiously.

“For anyone. Just get Gordon to take me to where he is, and I’ll do the rest.”

Jiaying shakes her head a little, but it’s not really a denial. More a sort of wonder.

“I believe you would too. But it’s too late. He’s already dead.”

Peggy is both disappointed and relieved. It’s a good thing Whitehall is gone. And yet killing him was the only thing she could have done for Jiaying, the only thing she had to offer to correct her previous mistake.

“How did he die?” Hopefully it was something long and drawn out.

“Shield caught him. They didn’t want him but they were afraid to let anyone else have him, because of what happened last time. So when they discovered our community, they killed two birds with one stone and handed him over to us.” Jiaying’s mouth curved in a little smile. “Director Coulson felt it was only fair.”

It’s a ruthless bit of politicking – this new Director had to have known that Whitehall’s death would be horrific – and yet Peggy can’t promise she wouldn’t have done the same thing, knowing what Whitehall had done. 

“That’s not quite the end of the story, though,” Jiaying continues. “His organs – my organs, the ones he stole – were still viable. My Gift was active within him, and we already knew that it could be transplanted into someone else, with the correct procedure. It seemed a waste, when there were other more worthy recipients out there.” Her gaze meets Peggy’s significantly.

The breath leaves Peggy’s lungs in a rush of nausea. If she hadn’t just emptied her stomach, she’d do it again.

“He’s in – you put that deviant old man’s organs inside –” Her hands go to her abdomen, to the scar tissue where they’d cut her open. The place where they’d emptied her out and filled her back in. 

Jiaying’s hands capture hers and hold them still, surprisingly strong.

“ _My_  organs.  _My_  flesh and blood.  _My_  Gift.” Her voice is fierce. “He stole it from me,  _I_  decided where it went. I could have burned his body and everything with it, but I didn’t. I gave it to you, Peggy. This was my gift to you.”

“Why?” Peggy snarls, still fighting nausea at the thought of her blood having once run through the veins of Whitehall. 

“Because you saved me. You pulled me out of a cage, and I wasn’t the only one. You did so much good, and you could have done so much more if time hadn’t caught up to you.” Jiaying’s fingers squeeze hers almost painfully tight, then relax, and Jiaying lifts her hands so that she can kiss Peggy’s knuckles. “Something good needs to have come out of all that pain.”


	5. Chapter 5

It’s nearly dark when Peggy gets back to the bunker. Jiaying had tried to talk her into coming back to Afterlife, but not too hard. She seemed to graciously understand that Peggy needed space and left soon after with Gordon with a promise to return the next morning.

The bodies are gone, probably disposed of by Gordon into a volcano or down an ocean rift somewhere. Peggy’s backpack is sitting by the open door, along with a double-barrelled shotgun and a box of ammo. Peggy checks that it’s properly unloaded. She should be angry – she doesn’t buy Gordon’s ridiculous story about a sniper on the ridge for a moment – but it doesn’t elicit a reaction. She doesn’t feel upset or annoyed or sad. Just drained.

She takes the gun inside with her. The three remaining Hydra agents are still handcuffed to the pipe. None of them say anything as she pulls up a chair.

“Have any of you worked for Whitehall?” Her voice sounds as empty as she feels.

No one answers and Peggy says tiredly:

“I understand the man is dead. I’m not asking for information on any current heads of Hydra. Just him.”

One of the agents, less timid or stoic than the others speaks.

“What did you do to Davis and Simpson?”

“Who?”

“The people that freak took outside. Where are they?”

“Dead.”

In the past, she had played on the image of crisp British efficiency, creating a sense of a torturer who’d take professional pride but no particular malice in hurting you. Apparently there’s something to be said for utter indifference as well. Her apathy seems to unnerve the three agents.

She questions all three for an hour and after it becomes clear they can’t give her anything more, she takes them out to the forest and disposes of them. It’s too late in the day to dig a grave so she kicks leaf litter over the bodies and leaves them. Hopefully it won’t attract a bear.  

She returns to the bunker and locks everything up tight before taking a long hot shower in one of the deserted bathrooms.  Her skin is shrivelled and pruny when she finally get out, dripping water on the mat as she studies the fogged-up mirror like it’s an adversary.

“Come on,” she mutters. “It’s not going to bite you.”

She swipes a hand across the glass, clearing it so she can see her face.

Before she… before Jiaying showed her how to use her Gift, Peggy had looked like she was in her forties. A respectable, well-preserved forty, but forty nonetheless.

Now she doesn’t look a day over twenty. There’s a fresh-faced roundness to her cheeks, a soft glow to her skin that women spend thousands in salons trying to replicate. She no longer looks like an old woman or a tough-as-nails director of Shield. She looks like she should be in college, attending lectures and fending off young men in bars. Her youth restored at the small price of two lives.

She should call someone. Turn herself in, report what she can do, and make sure that she’s locked up safe somewhere where she can never hurt anyone again.

What she does is eat a meal from the leftover food in the fridge, and curl up in one of the unused beds. She falls into a deep sleep.

* * *

She dreams of the war. She’s with the Howling Commandoes and they’re sneaking into a German camp, over a wall of bodies. Men, women and children lay curled up where they were dumped, eyes and mouths opened in silent screams, skin darkened like a bruise.   

In the middle of the camp, a crooked, hunched figure looms over a crying child. Peggy catches a glimpse of blonde hair and realises that's little Sharon, small face red-eyed and teary as she tries to squirm away from the grasping, greedy hands. Peggy takes aim as the cloaked head looks up and her finger pulls trigger a split-second before she recognises _her own face_ –

* * *

Peggy gasps awake. A shrill buzzing leads her to a mobile phone beside the bed informing her it’s six am. Probably set by one of the former inhabitants before she offed them. Bloody inconsiderate of them.  

Fuck it, she’s not getting any more sleep.

She finds some thick woollen socks and layers up. Whoever had designed this bunker hadn't given much thought to insulation; outside of her nice warm bed it's freezing. She pads into the kitchen where she eats peanut butter out of the jar and considers her net move. The dark sullen despair of last night has faded, leaving her mildly embarrassed by the vagaries of her own mind. In the light of day, everything looks clearer. Not good by any means, but manageable.

She knows what she needs to do.

She spends the morning stripping the bunker of weapons. She gets into the computers and strips them of any usable information. If it had been a more recent version she’d never have managed it, but apparently this bunker hasn’t upgraded since the seventies. Ironically a younger agent would have been stumped by a machine Peggy could manipulate with her eyes closed.

She has most of the guns laid on the kitchen table and is taking inventory when a flash of blue light lets her know Gordon has arrived.

“What are you doing?” He says, head tilted in that way that means he’s using whatever extra-senses he has instead of sight.

“Preparing.”

“To shoot me?” He says it with a mocking curve to his mouth.

“A novel idea, but no.” Peggy sets a gun down and picks up another. “I want you to take me to Austria.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard me out yet.”

“Jiaying sent me to ask if you were ready to come home yet. You can stay here, come with me to Afterlife, or find your own way back to civilization. Those are your three options.”

“Don’t be tiresome, Gordon. You want me to go to Austria, trust me.”

“By all means, enlighten me.”

“I interrogated the three agents you left. One of them used to work for Whitehall.”

Gordon’s mouth tightens very slightly. Peggy continues:

“Apparently Whitehall continued his research on immortality. He couldn’t do otherwise, ironically, because as the only living example of de-aging – so far as Hydra was aware – there was a very real danger of his being dissected by his compatriots. The rumours went that the other heads kept him around because he promised he could replicate the effects. He kept some of his research at a base in Austria.” Peggy flicks the safety on and lays the gun down on the table. She looks Gordon in the face, not letting her gaze or resolve waver. “I want to go there and destroy it.”

Gordon doesn't answer straight away. She can’t tell what he's thinking. 

“Whitehall’s research created you,” he says finally in a neutral tone. 

“And the world would have been better off if I’d put a bullet in that man’s skull in the 1940’s. This kind of knowledge cannot be allowed to exist because eventually someone somewhere is going to try and replicate it.”

She realises she’s breathing hard. She’s angry, but she’s also right. What had been done to Jiaying – what Jiaying had gone onto do to Peggy – it all comes back that unspeakable knowledge that Whitehall had put together. Peggy can’t correct her mistakes, but she can stop the cycle before it goes any further.  

Gordon is silent a moment.

“Why didn’t you?” He says after a moment.

“Why didn’t I what?”

“Kill Whitehall when you had the chance.” The cold flatness of his tone throws her slightly. For the first time she realises that his dislike might not just be because of her enhancement.

“I trusted in the system,” she says finally. “I thought his crimes were sufficient to see him locked away permanently, and that no one would be negligent or corrupt enough to allow him out again. I was wrong.”

“You weren’t the one to suffer for it.”

“No. I wasn’t.”

She admits it quietly and doesn’t offer any excuses.

Gordon is doing that head-tilt again, like he’s trying to get a better read on her. She remains still, waiting.

Finally he says:

“Whereabouts in Austria?”

* * *

They have trouble with the exact location, because Gordon doesn’t navigate with coordinates. His method of travel relies on connections. If a person he knows is standing on the other side of the world, he can go to them. Or if it’s a place or object closely connected to a person, he can sometimes go. Letters and numbers might as well be dead air to him.

“Just take me to somewhere in Austria,” Peggy says finally. “I’ll go from foot.”

“In Austria.” Gordon’s voice is very dry.

“I know enough of the language to get by. And I look like a college hitchhiker, no one will look twice. I’ve done madder things.” Though usually she had a team to back her up. What would she give for Dum Dum or Gabe right now.

“If you get caught, I’m not coming to save you,” Gordon warns. “My people rely on secrecy.”

Peggy frowned.

“Wait a moment. You leave your people behind rather than rescuing them?”

“We cannot risk being exposed.”

“If your people are in the hands of the enemy, you’re _already_ exposed. Unless all your people are fitted with cyanide pills, Hydra would torture everything out of them.”

“Hydra’s less interested in torturing us for information than science. Which reminds me.” Gordon pulls a small tin out of the pocket of his overcoat. “For you.”

“Cyanide pills. Why Gordon, you shouldn’t have.”

“I argued for the cyanide pills.” It’s really hard to tell when Gordon is joking. “It’s a gift from Jiaying. If you’re caught, open it and shatter the contents. It will kill everything not of our bloodline within reach.”

“Including me?”

Gordon shrugs, unconcerned.

“Maybe. You’d be better off dead than in Hydra’s hands. Don’t touch it until you’re absolutely certain.”

Peggy puts the tin in her pocket and checks one last time that she has everything.

“Alright, I think I’m ready –”

Gordon doesn’t wait for her to finish before he grabs her hand and they disappear.

They reappear in an icy-cold alleyway that makes Canada feel like a tropical climate. 

“Bloody hell, Gordon!” Peggy yanks her hand out of his and rubs up and down her arms. “Some bloody warning next time!”

Gordon, as expected, ignores her complaint. 

“There’s one of my people in the area,” he says. “I used them to hone in on this location, so I expect you to vacate it as quickly as possible. If Hydra finds them because of you, their blood is on your hands.”

“Fine, I’ll piss off then. Tell Jiaying I said please no more kidnapping.”

“Fine.”

He disappears, leaving her in an alley. Bastard.

* * *

 

She figures out that she’s in Graz, which is a bit further away from where she’d hoped but that turns out to be a good thing when it comes to changing over the Candadian money she’d taken from the bunker. Graz is large enough to have a foreign currency exchange, which she wouldn’t be able to find in a smaller town.  

She might have exaggerated her language skills somewhat to Gordon, but she can recall just enough to puzzle out the street signs. In any case, she’s wearing a youthful face that barely looks out of her teens, and that apparently hits several motherly instincts. No less than three middle-aged women stop to ask her if she’s lost or needs help. She gets directions to the train station and to a safe, affordable hotel.

She buys a ticket to a town closer to where she needs to go, and books into the hotel, which is lovely and small and run by an old widow who fusses over Peggy travelling alone.

“My boyfriend and I had a fight,” Peggy says airily. “He left me find my own way home.”

That gets her a great deal of sympathy and commiseration over unreliable men. It’s a relief to go into her room and get some time alone.

She runs a bath and soaks for a very long time. The alien youthfulness of her body is unsettling. It doesn't look like her body. It doesn't look like it belongs her at all. She spends a good long while tracing her old scars, reassuring herself that they still exist.  This is still the same body that was shot here, that was stabbed there, that burned herself on a kettle here... She tells her the stories over and over again until this soft, smooth body stops feeling so strange and starts feeling like hers again. The only one she avoids is the incision scar down her middle. She tries to avoid looking at or even thinking about that one. 

She soaks for ages, absorbing the heat and sweet-scented soaps. Her skin is tingling by the time she gets out and dries off. Sadly, the clothes she’d taken from the base aren’t very dressy. The most she can find is a set of jeans and a plain t-shirt. Then again, looking at the pretty ingenuous face in the mirror, she doesn’t think she needs much more than that.

It’s not that hard to find a bar near the hotel. It’s filled with tourists, young people dressed up, or middle-aged holiday-makers unwinding after a day traversing the city. None of them are what she’s after, and she leaves again. The next bar is closer. It’s apparently a watering hole for the local barracks and it’s filled with off-duty army boys laughing too loud.

She nurses her drink and watches them surreptitiously, taking her time with her selection.

One of them is skinny. No, wiry. Lean and whip-thin, and not very tall. He has red-hair, shaved to a buzzcut, and freckles. But there’s something about him, a patient grin when one of his friends shoves him playfully, a calm steadiness in the way he holds himself that’s just right.

Peggy waits until he’s gone up to the bar, and approaches him.

“Buy you a drink, soldier?”

He turns to look at her and blushes bright red around his freckles.

His name, she finds out, is Lukas. His English isn’t very good, but her Austrian isn’t any better so they’re about even. He’s not used to attention from women, she can tell that much from the way he stutters. Shy, or just overshadowed by better looking friends. She can work with that.

At the hotel, she sneaks him past the reception desk and to her room. In her room, he kisses her, but hesitates to do anything else, not presuming his welcome. Peggy’s heart just about melts; he really is a sweet one. She pushes him back onto the bed and gently unbuttons his shirt. She takes his slim, elegant hands and shows him what to do with her body. He's the first man she's been with in over a decade, and she takes her time, savoring the experience. 

He looks up at her as if she’s a revelation, and if his English isn’t good enough for him to know that she says the wrong name, that’s no one’s business but her own. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to anything who knows anything about Graz. I've never been there, so it's probably completely inaccurate.


	6. Chapter 6

She buys a second hand car in one of the smaller towns. She also stops to buy clothes from a higher end women’s store, deliberately choosing ones that invoke a sense of the forties. Just the sort of thing an old woman in a young woman’s body would choose. The make up is easier, just picking up the right shades from the cosmetics section, but the hair is a nightmare without a proper curling iron. Still, she manages.

When she looks in the motel bathroom mirror, it’s eerily like looking through a window in time. It could be her wartime self – no, younger. That hopeful, determined girl who’d kicked through every barrier to get into the army. She only hopes this later version can be as successful.

She drives to the base’s gates, which are barred and covered in signs warning of biological hazards. She closes her eyes and breathes out, focusing on that nebulous sense that Jiaying had taught her to use. It’s vague, but a scattering of energy appears on the edges of her awareness. Maybe ten or so people; it gets harder to differentiate individuals once the numbers get higher. 

She presses the intercom.

“This is private property,” a woman’s voice says.

“Whitehall sends his regards,” Peggy responds. There’s a pause, then:

“Whitehall is dead.”

“Surely you know better than to believe that.”

There’s a second, longer pause, and the gates open. Peggy drives up to the building, parks the car and walks to the front door.

It’s opened by two men in dark uniforms who aim guns at her.

“There’s really no need for that,” she says dryly.

“Keep your hands were we can see them,” one says.

“This is really very tiresome. I’ve been sent all this way to warn you, and the longer you diddle around, the less likely any of us survive. Where’s your commanding officer?”

A woman in her forties comes out behind them. She looks like a scientist who’s gone a few days without sleep. Hair in need of a trim, skin pale, dark circles under her eyes.

“I’m Dr Tepper,” she says. “Who the hell are you?”

“You don’t recognise me?” Peggy rolls her eyes. “Whitehall said you were slow on the uptake, but this is ridiculous.”

The woman’s face turns a bit pink.

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re some strange woman who turned up on our doorstep. Protocol says I should shoot you.”

“I really wouldn’t.”

“Then prove that Whitehall sent you.”

“I’ll do better than that. Look up Margaret Carter.” Tepper looks confused and suspicious and Peggy added: “Go on. I’m not going anywhere.”

The woman finally pulled out a Smartphone. Peggy waits as she typs her query in.

After a few seconds, Tepper looks up, eyes wide, then back down at the screen, then up again.

“I didn’t know Whitehall had successfully duplicated the procedure,” she says finally.

“It was a recent advancement.”

“This is incredible. After all this time…” Tepper trails off, staring at Peggy like she’d seen the Mona Lisa. Peggy flicks a pointed look at the guns. “Guys, put those away. I’m sorry, ma’am. I…that is… I wasn’t aware that you were Hydra.”

There’s a very faint question there, a hint of suspicion. Peggy had considered how to play this on the way here. She could pretend to be very high up the ranks, high enough that people wouldn’t ask questions, but that would necessitate knowing a great deal more than she did.

In the end, she’d decided to go in the opposite direction, using some of the more revolting information her prisoners had given her.

“I’m sure none of us started out intending to be Hydra,” she says. “But you know how it is. Whitehall is a brilliant man. Once he explained the rewards to me, I was happy to comply.”

It’s amazing the difference that small sentence makes. Tepper gives her a second once-over, lips curling in a mean little smile.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “I can imagine.”

She clearly knows _exactly_ what the phrase means, which suggests she’s dealt with other poor brainwashed souls in the past. And had probably given them the same patronising smile and congratulated herself on picking the right bloody side.

Peggy is going to shoot her before the night’s over.

“ _If_ you’re happy with my credentials,” Peggy says waspishly. “We have to move quickly. Shield will be here soon.”

The smile fades from Tepper’s face.

“Shield?”

“Yes, Shield.” Peggy settles a look of tightly wound concern on her face. “I broke Whitehall out of Shield custody not long ago, but they still have Bakshi. Whitehall doesn’t know how much is compromised.”

There is just enough truth in this to make it convincing; Shield _did_ capture Whitehall and Bakshi not long ago. Both men are now dead, but neither in a way that would make it onto Hydra’s radar.

“Shit,” Tepper mutters, running her fingers through her hair, ruffling it up further. “Okay, don’t panic. We’ll just have to – have to –”

“Delete the research,” Peggy says. “It cannot be allowed to fall into Shield’s hands.”

“All of it? But all those years…”

“Clearly aren’t necessary. Whitehall already has what he needs from your work. Now it’s a loose thread.” Tepper continues to look doubtful and Peggy sighs. “Doctor, Whitehall was very specific. You have done good work, but we cannot move forward by looking back. Now is the time to protect ourselves and ensure Hydra’s survival.”

“All progress requires sacrifice,” Tepper murmurs, sounding like she’s quoting someone. “I don’t like it, but if it is the only way…”

“It is.”

“Then the sacrifice must be made.”

She turns and walks down the hall. Peggy follows. At a large office, Tepper sets the two guards to shredding all documentation and smashing the hard drives of the computers.

“Tell Adams to start the furnace downstairs and bring supplies for clean up,” she says. “Agent Carter, I’ll need your help with this next part.”

“Of course.”

Tepper leads her down a dimly lit hallway to a door where she swipes a keycard. Inside smells faintly of antiseptic and a faint coppery undertone that makes the hair rise on the back of Peggy's neck. When she concentrates, there are four or five life signs close by. She wishes she’d practised more; she can barely sense them even from this distance.

“Put this on,” Tepper says, handing Peggy a white surgical gown meant to be draped over clothes. She’s pulling her own on, tying back her hair.

“Is there a biological hazard?” Peggy asks, shrugging the gown on.

“You never know. This is going to be messy.” The woman eyes her. “But somehow I doubt you will have trouble with that. Whitehall’s… protégées rarely do.”

Peggy shrugs.

“Lets get this done.”

Tepper opens a drawer and gets out a handgun. Peggy very nearly takes her out then and there, but the woman just passes it absently to her with a box of ammunition.

“Load that, would you,” she says and swipes her keycard through yet another door that hisses open, unleashes a wave of antiseptic and blood-smell. Peggy loads the handgun, disturbed by how easily Tepper trusted her. The kind of obedience it suggests in Whitehall’s victims is horrifying.

How many people had fought on Hydra’s side because they really wanted to?

She follows Tepper into the next room, filled with apprehension, one hand casually resting near the pocket holding the tin that Gordon gave her.

There are five bodies in the room. That’s Peggy’s first thought. Then she sees the hospital equipment beside each bed and hears the slow beep-beep of heart monitors and realises she’s looking at living patients.

Then she takes a closer look, and realises the truth is much, much worse.

“Who are they?” She says.

Tepper is busy detaching equipment, removing IV’s from the unconscious girl on the first bed.

“The clones,” she answers absently.

“What clones?”

“From the original source.” Tepper glances up and rolls her eyes at Peggy’s blank expression. “Whitehall never tells you people anything. These are the clones we grew using the tissue samples from a Gifted. The one that’s responsible for Whitehall’s de-aging, and yours, if you’re interested.”

Peggy moves closer to one of the beds, the one without bandaging obscuring the face. It a mirror image for Jiaying, except years younger. A teenager, her eyes closed in serene sleep. She still has puppy fat for god’s sake.

“I didn’t know we could clone people,” Peggy says distantly, gaze following down the girl’s body to the missing arm and leg, the skin dotted with scars.

“Of course we can. We can do it with sheep, we can do it with humans. It was a long term project, but Pierce felt it was worth the investment. It’s a shame really.”

“A shame?”

“None of it worked. For some reason, whenever we managed to produce a foetus, whole segments of DNA went inactive. We tried everything we could to activate it but…” Tepper shrugged with a sigh. “So far as we could tell, all we had were five ordinary subjects. No anti-aging properties at all.”

Peggy looks at the next bed, at the shorn head with tubing sticking in and out. Just a child really. All of them just children.

“Are they conscious?”

“Comatose.” Terry moves to the next bed, starts unplugging equipment. “When they reached puberty, they underwent a process to render them brain dead. It was more humane.”

She looks up in time to catch Peggy’s incredulous gaze, and misinterprets it.

“Look, Whitehall can bitch about polluting final results all he wants, the issue was never in their brain functions. It was in their DNA. There was no point in making them suffer.”

“You’re a real saint,” Peggy says coldly.

“What the hell do you know. Anyway, none of it matters now. Whitehall made it work without them – how did he do that?”

“Funny story.” Peggy draws her gun and shoots Tepper twice in the stomach. “But I don’t have time for it now.”

Tepper stares at her incredulously. She falls gracelessly, blood spilling down her gown.

“You –”

Peggy crosses the floor in a click-click of her shoes and removes the keycard from about Tepper’s neck. Tepper clutches at the edge of Peggy’s surgical gown as she steps back.

“Calm your mind,” she gasps. “Compliance will be –”

“Five children,” Peggy says. “Five fucking children, you psychopath.”

She shoots Tepper in the head.

She barely has time to feel any satisfaction before she hears the chime of the elevator and the rattle of a gurney. She kicks the body behind a bed and walks to the door to meet the guard in the hallway. He’s pushing a gurney, already with bodybags neatly folded and ready.

He doesn’t seem phased by the blood on Peggy’s gown, apparently finding this normal.  

“All done?” He says.

“Just cleaning up,” Peggy says, stepping aside. “Go on in. I’ll be right behind you.”

* * *

She makes quick work of the guard. She takes his radio and weapon and sweeps the rest of the base. She kills a lab assistant frantically emptying a safe and stuffs the body under a desk. She checks in the labs only to make sure the three guards are obeying Tepper’s instructions to destroy everything.  

“How are we coming along?” She says crisply.

“Nearly there, ma’am. Everything was made to be easily disposable, in case Shield ever came.”

“Better step it up.” Peggy made a show of checking her watch. “We only have two hours.”

She glances at the boxes of documents and wonders with a chill how many other people died under Whitehall’s knife. That’s a lot of documentation for just five test subjects, even if you counted the data gathered from Jiaying. She wonders briefly if she should keep some of it; there might be families out there who’d like answers about what happened to their loved ones. But no; better they live in ignorance of the suffering Whitehall inflicted.

A name catches her eye. “J. Johnson”, scrawled like an after thought on a box labelled “Subject Zero to Ten” with a string of indexing numbers after it.

Jiaying’s last name is Johnson.

Peggy glances at the guards, who aren’t paying her any attention, and opens one of the folders. It’s written like an autopsy report, with pictures and neat precise medical terminology. Except the woman in those pictures isn’t dead. She should be. God, Peggy wishes she was.  

She closes the file, any remnant of disquiet she’d felt about Jiaying’s actions towards Whitehall gone. Jiaying hadn’t over-stated what had been done to her. If anything, she’d understated it. Were Whitehall still alive, Peggy might have held him down herself. She doesn’t dare open any of the other folders, afraid she won’t be able to hold her composure if she sees it repeated on the bodies of the children downstairs. The only thing she does is yank free the USB attached to the file, and slip it in her pocket.

The guards haven’t noticed anything, too busy shredding. One of them, more nervous than the others, asks:

“Where do we go after this?”

“There’s transport waiting to take us to Whitehall. Is there anyone else left on base?”

“Just Beasley and Jameson.”

“Beasley… that was the scrawny little scientist type with the pimples?”

“No, that was Jameson. Beasley’s emptying the armoury.”

“I’ll go help him. You focus on this.”

She goes down to the armoury and finds it already empty. She curses softly. Was it too much to ask for an incompetent Hydra agent?

He couldn’t have gone far. The only question is _where_ he would go.

She closes her eyes and breathes out, focusing on that nebulous sense in the back of her head. There’s three above her, five flickering below her and one moving down.

She grabs a new magazine and _runs_ for the elevator,, re-loading as she goes. She hammers on the button, the seconds stretching out that it takes for the light to turn on and the doors to slide open. She hits the button for the lower level, all the while listening on the radio. Nothing happens, there’s no Beasley alerting anyone that he’d found the wrong bodies on the floor. She might be just in time.

She reaches the room to find Beasley leaning over Tepper, one hand pulling his radio from his belt.

“Mayers, Tepper is –”

He stops when Peggy’s gun presses against the side of his head.

“Think very carefully about what you’re going to say,” she says quietly.

The radio crackles.

“Beasley, say again. Tepper is what?”

Beasley wets his lips as he looks up at Peggy. His eyes are huge.

“Tepper is – Tepper is getting impatient.”

“We’re almost done. Fifteen minutes at most.”

“Good boy,” Peggy says. “Now turn it off and slide it away.” He does as he’s told.

“You don’t have to kill me,” he says. “I can be useful to Whitehall.”

It’s rather sickening that when betrayed, he doesn’t assume his enemies are behind it, but his allies.

“Prove it,” she says. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Tepper was working with List. That’s why she let this place go so easily. She had other plans.”

“List is dead.” Peggy pushes the gun harder against his head. “What do you mean everything? More clones?”

“I don’t know. After the funding was cut, Tepper contacted List. They were talking about re-opening a new project, something called Sleeping Beauty or something like that.” Beasley sucks in a breath. “I accompanied her to her meetings with him, I can tell you everything.”

Peggy considers this.

“Hands near the bed,” she says, fishing out the zip-ties she’d made sure to bring along. “If you–”

He moves and suddenly has a knife in his hand.

Later, Peggy will blame it on being out of practise. She’d never have made this kind of mistake back in the old days.

The knife going in registers more as a punch than a strike. The gun goes off, but he’s moved too fast and they’re scrabbling on the floor, trying to kill each other. He’s heavier and stronger and there’s a goddamn knife in her side.

His face is too close, sweating, teeth bared in concentration. Bare skin, all energy coiling beneath the skin, she can see it all and it’s barely an effort to grab his face and _pull_. All the breath leaves him, eyes going wide. His lips are moving, trying to make sound, but his whole body is tensed, frozen in place like a mouse paralysed by a snake.

Peggy keeps her hand on him. Her other hand reaches down – ow, ow, and bloody _ow_ – to gingerly pull the knife out of her side. With the obstruction gone, she returns both hands to cup the man’s face.

He looks terrified, skin darkened like a bruise. He’s only a boy. He stood aside and let five little girls be turned into vegetables.

She closes her eyes and drains him dry. 

* * *

Afterwards, she shoves the body off her and tries to stand on feet gone wobbly. The world is strange and fuzzy, and it’s an effort to recall why she’s here and what she’s doing.

The radio is making clicking noises from where it rests against the wall.

“Beasley, do you copy… Tepper, come in…”

She staggers over and picks it up.

“Beasley and Tepper can’t come to the phone right now,” she says breathlessly. “But you can leave a message.” She fights the urge to giggle.

Bloody goddamn high. What sort of Gift is this?

The radio is silent for a few seconds.

“Carter,” a man’s voice says. “You’re confused. Take a deep breath and calm your mind. Compliance will be rewarded.”

Peggy considers this.

“Yes,” she says. “I am happy to comply.”

“Good. Where are you?”

“Downstairs in the lab.”

The radio is silent, then clicks as he comes back on.

“Remain where you are. Remember, compliance will be rewarded.”

“I am happy to comply.” Peggy shrugs off her coat and pulls out the tin Gordon had given her. Inside, a blue crystal sits inside a protective glass casing. There are dark ripples through the crystal like black smudges. She holds it carefully in her hand. 

“Carter, are you there?” the voice says over the radio. 

“Yes.”

“We’re coming down. Surrender yourself and compliance will be rewarded.”

Peggy swallows a terrible batch of inappropriate giggles, nearly choking as she forces out:

“I am happy to comply.”

The elevator dings.

“Carter?” One of them calls. It’s the same one that had spoken to her on the radio.

“In here.”

Peggy stands in the middle of the room, glass-covered crystal in one hand, fingers curled to hide it. 

The agents enter the room one at a time, eyes widening at the bodies on the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” one of them says. “I hate it when Whitehall’s puppets go sour. They’re a fucking mess to clean up after.”

“Shall we put her down?” Another says, eyes on Peggy.

“No, let Whitehall take care of her.” The third takes out a plastic ziplock and comes toward Peggy. “Remember, compliance will be – ”

They’re all close enough, Peggy decides.

She lets the crystal drop.

It shatters on the concrete and mist explodes across the floor. 

* * *

It takes a few seconds to work out what’s happening. Gordon had told her the crystal would kill; he hadn’t specified _how_.

It hurts like hell, Peggy finds out, but it’s fast. Pain rushes up her legs in a steady wave, leaving numbness in its wake. She can’t feel her legs, and only realises why she sees the stone where her feet and ankles should be.

She doesn’t have time to panic, doesn’t have time to think of anything at all really. The Hydra agents are screaming in pain and panic, and she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and lets it out just before her lungs are consumed.

She thinks of her husband and her children. Of Steve. Of Angie and Jarvis and Stark. All those long, wonderful years she had. It’s better this way. She had her time, and this is a good end.

A good, honourable, merciful - 

* * *

For a while there’s nothing. 

* * *

Awareness returns with a sense of pressure and a burning need for air. She’s moves on instinct, straining against whatever is holding her so suffocatingly still. The covering crumbles surprisingly easily, falling away from her mouth and face.

She coughs, sucks in air, nearly swallows a bit of rock, spits it out again. She twists, dragging her arms and legs out of encasing rock, nearly losing her shoes in the process. She staggers clear, utterly confused and not a little bit pissed off at the anti-climax.

She’s supposed to be dead.

Why isn’t she dead?

Nothing’s changed much in the time she’s been out. The three Hydra agents are frozen columns of rock. The bodies on the beds are now slabs of human-shaped rock, impassive and beyond anything that Hydra can do to them. They at least are at peace.

Peggy doesn't know why she's not dead as well. Gordon had promised she would be –

A small movement draws her eye.

It’s one of the statues on the beds. There are cracks forming, the rock splitting open and slim fingers wriggle into view. They curl and uncurl shyly, like flowers tremulously reaching toward the light and Peggy abruptly remembers – there’s no breathing inside stone.

It galvanizes her into action and she rushes to the bed, digging her fingernails into the rock over where the face would be. The substance gives away as easily as before and she’s picking pieces off scrunched up teenage face. Big, dark eyes open, focus on Peggy. The expression in them is pure terror.

“I’m sorry,” the girl gasps. “I’ll be good. I’ll be good, I swear.”

Something – some rush of grief and anger and terrible sadness – rushes through Peggy. She says very gently:

“It’s okay, you’re not in trouble. You’re safe.”

She’s not sure the girl hears or believes her. The girl’s eyes are darting like a trapped animal, breathing hard. On the next bed, cracks are also forming, and Peggy knows she has to move.

“I’ll be right back,” she says. “I need to help your sisters. But I’m not leaving you, I promise. I’ll be right here.”

She moves hurriedly from bed to bed, breaking the rock open to clear mouths and noses. She speaks soothing words, repeating the same thing over and over – you’re safe, it’s over, no one’s going to hurt you – but doubts the girls remotely comprehend it. If they grew up in Hydra, their definition of safety will be a world away from hers.

Only two of them are strong enough to get out of bed and stand on wobbly feet, like newborn foals. The resemblance to Jiaying is astounding.

“Is the experiment over, ma’am?” One says, her eyelashes clumped with tears, and Peggy somehow knows this is not the first time that question’s been asked.

“It’s over,” Peggy says firmly. “No one will ever do another experiment on you ever again.”

They don’t believe her. Funny how she can read Jiaying’s cynicism in these children’s resignation.

“Are you our new handler?” One asks helplessly. She rubs her shaved head fretfully, gingerly touching the new scars.

Peggy elects not to ask that question. There’s no telling what they’ve been conditioned to believe.

“Quiet a moment,” she says. “I need to make a call.”

She takes out the disposable phone and calls the number Gordon gave her.

“Are you alone?” He says when he picks up.

“The Hydra agents are dead,” Peggy says. “I have five of their test subjects here, still alive.”

“Not our problem.”

“They survived the crystal.”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone line.

“Gordon?”

There’s a pop of blue light, and one of the girls yelps in surprise as Gordon appears beside her bed. He ‘looks’ about and draws a sharp breath.

“Hydra had samples of Jiaying’s DNA,” Peggy says before he can say anything. His mouth hardens.

“They all came through the mists?” He asks, bending down to pick up a shard of rock from the ground.

“I don’t know what that– do you mean what happened with the crystal?”

He doesn’t answer, letting the shard drop.

“I’ll take them to Afterlife,” he says. “We’ll show them the way.” He pauses a beat, face turned in Peggy’s direction. “Were you in the room when the crystal broke?” He says, his tone odd.

“Yes.”

“It didn’t do anything to you?”

“Apart from hurting like hell, not much. Next time you give me a suicide pill, pick something a little less painful than being turned to solid rock.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he says, sounding faintly strangled.

There’s a crash and Peggy whirls round to see one of the girls has picked up a tray and smashed it against one of statues. The fossilized head of the former Hydra agent falls off, revealing nothing but more rock beneath. 


	7. Chapter 7

Peggy meets Jiaying at a coffee shop a week later.

The woman is wearing a soft silken wrap that shades her face from casual scrutiny. Her hands wrap around a cup of herbal tea as she breathes in the smell. Her eyes close, her mouth curling in a smile.

“I do love some things about the outside,” she says. She opens her eyes, studying Peggy. “You look better. More together." 

“I feel better." Peggy pours herself a cup of tea. She feels a little ridiculous, wearing jeans and a low-cut shirt with leather boots. Like mutton dressed as lamb, as the cruel saying goes. But with her eighteen-year-old face and body, dressing as old as she feels would be equally ridiculous. Besides, she understands the value of fitting in. Perhaps eventually she will become accustomed to it. "How are the girls?” She asks. 

“As well as can be expected.” The corner of Jiaying’s mouth curls down. “Delta won’t talk, or even make eye contact with anyone. Gamma tried to kill herself the other day – we had to talk her down from cutting her own throat with a butter knife.”

“That’s determination.” There’s a sour taste at the back of Peggy’s throat.

“Hydra took a literal arm and leg from her. She’s in despair. It will be a long time before she feels anything other than anger or grief.”

“Like you did,” Peggy says.There’s silence and she wonders if she’s over-stepped an invisible boundary.

“Yes. Like me,” Jiaying says finally. “Just when I think there is nothing else of mine Hydra can violate and destroy, they prove me wrong.”

There’s nothing that Peggy can say to that. Hydra had tortured Jiaying nearly to death, then grown five children from her flesh and blood just to repeat the process. If any of them grow up to become anything close to functional members of society, she’ll be surprised.

Then again, they’ll have time to recover. A _lot_ of time.

“Will the limbs grow back?” Peggy says. “If we – if I could find some more Hydra agents to –”

“We’re not starfish, Peggy.” Jiaying touches her face, tracing the scars there. “Some marks we will have to carry with us.”

Peggy nods, relieved. She’s not sure she could have hunted down Hydra agents for that sole purpose. Or maybe she could. She still remembers the Hydra file she’d found. Speaking of…

“I have something for you.” Peggy opens up her handbag and sets the flash-drive in front of Jiaying. 

“What is it?”

“The last information from the base. Specifically, footage of what Whitehall did to you.” Jiaying’s fingers pause millimetres from the flash-drive.

“You watched it?” There’s a dangerous note there, a leashed anger that Peggy would prefer to avoid provoking. She keeps her voice calm and straightforward.

“Just enough to know what I was seeing. I thought you might like to make the decision on what to do with it. If you want to destroy it so no one ever sees it. Or maybe you would like proof of what happened.”

Honestly, she thinks it would be healthy for Jiaying to destroy the damn thing with her own two hands. Jiaying seems like a woman with a lot of rage beneath her serene exterior. She’s disappointed when Jiaying picks it up, gingerly, like it’s a poisonous insect.

“I don’t know…” Her voice is hushed.

“Think about it. Hammers can be carthaic, or if you want to light a fire and burn Whitehall in effigy, that’s good too.”

Jiaying’s fingers curl about the flashdrive like claws and she tucks it away in her handbag.

“You should come back to Afterlife,” she says, and Peggy accepts the change in subject without comment.

“No, I really can’t.”

“Peggy, you’re one of us. The crystal proved it. You came through the mists and survived.”

Only because of what Jiaying did to her, Peggy thinks but is not cruel enough to say. By that logic, Whitehall was one of them too.

“I have work I need to do.”

“What work?”

“A few people I need to burn in effigy. Or literally, if I’m being accurate.”

That makes Jiaying smile before she quickly controls it. Peggy’s getting good at telling the difference between Jiaying’s real smiles and her false ones.

“You’re not going to tell me anything more?”

“You’re allied with Shield – you might need plausible deniability. This is something I need to do. Old mistakes that need correcting. How many people get the chance to do that?”

“That’s an interesting take on the matter, for someone who tried to kill herself a week ago.”

Peggy doesn’t move, or even breathe. Jiaying smiles gently over the rim of her cup.

“You didn’t think you were gong to survive the crystal, did you? You had no intention of making it out of that base.”

“No,” Peggy admits after a minute. “I saved those girls by accident. I had no idea it would bring them back.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m more concerned with the fact that you’d rather die than live with your Gift.”

“That was…” Peggy feels flustered. She hates being pinned down by Jiaying. It makes her feel like a child again. “I was upset. I couldn’t see my family. My life’s work was for nothing. I had abilities that were…. Ending it all seemed like a good idea at the time, especially if it prevented someone else from being hurt in the future.”

“What changed?”

“The girls. It made me realise I was still good for something.” Peggy traces the edge of the table with her fingertips. “My Gift – our Gift – might be horrifying, but I can still use it to do good."

“Be careful with that. That road can lead to terrible places.” With that enigmatic warning, Jiaying moves on. “Raina did say that this would be the making of you, one way or another. Either you would die or you would rise, and you don’t look dead to me.”

“Raina.” Peggy huffs. “She gave me some strange warning about red doors and someone finding me. I’d take it with a pinch of salt.”

“Don’t be so sure. Her warnings have always been accurate in the past.” Jiaying tilts her head thoughtfully. “You’re not what I expected, you know.”

“Oh?”

“It’s like being a parent I suppose. You have all these ideas about who they will be and what they will do, and they always manage to surprise you. You seem to do nothing except surprise me.”

“I’m too old to be your daughter.”

“Don’t be too sure. I _am_ very old.”

They finish the tea, two old women with too-young faces. Peggy doesn’t think she’ll ever be completely comfortable with Jiaying, or trust her absolutely. There’s too much going on behind that smooth demeanour, too much manipulation and lies. But somehow she completely forgives her for it. Perhaps because what Jiaying went through can be led back to her own failure, perhaps because they share literal flesh and blood.

Perhaps because there is a very real possibility that in a hundred years time, they will be sitting here again, too old women with too-young faces, watching the decades march inexorably past.

As they stand to go, Jiaying says:

“One more thing. Raina has never been wrong. If she says someone will find you, they will find you, sooner or later.”

A shiver goes down Peggy’s spine. Perhaps she was wrong earlier; they won’t be sitting here together again.

“Then it’s best I do what I can before that time comes,” she says and is rewarded by the spark of respect in Jiaying’s eyes. The woman kisses Peggy's cheek, smelling faintly of Jasmine-scented perfume, and walks down the street to where Gordon is waiting for her.

Peggy departs in the opposite direction, walking alone and disappearing into the swirling crowd. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from my favorite poet Judith Wright, who used a lot of themes of death and renewal in her imagery and language, usually about the Australian landscape. It's from the poem 'The Cicadas', and the full quote is: "In the hard shell, an unmade body wakes, and fights to break free from its motherly enclosing ground. These dead muse must dig their upward grave in fear to cast the living into the naked air".


End file.
